[JBH1989]

It's obvious someone doesn't work on cars everyday, because they never in a million years would recommend a transmission flush if they did. I cannot begin to count how many transmissions have died after performing a power flush. So, it's not the best thing to do, it's actually the worst. The GM trans in my BMW has 286k original miles on it; it has never been flushed. If it had, I doubt it would have made it to 150k. I just did a trans service on it, both pans were decent even with that mileage on it. Runs and shifts great!

Dealer parts specialists are an oxymoron. Most dealer parts guys couldn't tell you if your truck had variable valve timing even if you told him the vin and he had his parts catalog open. It's not hard, it's just tedious cleaning the pan. I find a large diameter wire wheel on a grinder will remove the rtv from the pan mating surface in no time. All it leaves you with is removing the gasket material from the transmission case.

These transmissions are not really picky fluid wise, the basic trans design has been around for 20 years and has ran on D-II just fine, picking up hundreds of thousands of miles. If it doesn't call for anything special, just run Dexron III. If it wants T-IV, give it T-IV (the real stuff).